Don't Give Up, Don't Give In

by Louis Zamperini

  There’s no other feeling like running with an Olympic torch. You stand there looking for the approaching runner. Where is he? Where is she? Eventually a speck appears down the road and grows larger and larger as it approaches. And then it’s your turn. Every runner has their own torch, lit by the previous runner, and then you light the next. The flame is transferred and you’re off.

  You have to carry the torch one kilometer—about three-quarters of a mile—in less than nine minutes. In 1984, I was sixty-seven years old. I wanted to be in the best shape, so I ran two kilometers a day to train and got my time down to 3:50.

  I was supposed to run alongside Zamperini Field in Torrance (the airport was renamed after me as Zamperini Memorial Field—but when I came home they dropped the Memorial), because it went right down Pacific Coast Highway a half block from the airfield. But the officials made a mistake and got the airfield wrong. I ran at LAX instead.

  When I finished my leg, I lit the torch of Mack Robinson’s son—without knowing it. Mack Robinson was a silver medalist in the men’s 200 meters at the 1936 games. Jesse Owens only beat him by a foot and .4 seconds. Baseball great Jackie Robinson was Mac’s older brother.

  Eventually, the torch arrived at the Olympic Stadium as part of the opening ceremony. At the 1936 Games in Berlin, as part of the spectacle, they released thousands of pigeons into the air to symbolize doves, which stood for peace. Our team stood on the field wearing Buster Keaton straw hats. Lucky break. The pigeons flew. And circled. And dropped on everyone. We were supposed to stand at attention, but it was hard not to laugh.

  Little-known fact: The birds used to be released before the lighting ceremony, but because some of the birds would settle down on the edge of the cauldron, unfortunate accidents occurred. Now they light the flame first, and the birds know enough to stay far away.

  Of all my torches, the LA torch was the only one that you could actually light at any time. The handle was a propane container. You lit the top felt with lighter fluid, then opened the propane to make the flame bigger. Subsequent torches didn’t work that way. When the juice ran out that was it.

  I took the LA torch to lots of schools. I’d stand onstage and light it, and the kids could come up and have their pictures taken.

  In Japan for the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics, I started running in Joetsu—once called Naoetsu. The flame had arrived the night before and was kept on hold for the ceremony. There was a banquet. In the morning we went to a tent. Introductions were made and little speeches given. The mayor said, “Welcome to Joetsu under different circumstances.” Then I took my torch, held it high, and the previous torchbearer lit it. I turned to the crowd so that they could see—and I started to run.

  I wore a beautiful light running suit, but I’d trained in my regular clothes plus a couple of extra sweaters for the cold—as well as to add extra weight. Most people don’t realize that you have to train to carry a torch. They’re not terribly heavy—maybe four pounds—but you have to hold it up high the whole way. And smile. And wave. Your arm muscles need to be fit.

  I’ve met torch carriers who forgot (or never knew) this; then their arm starts killing them and slowly drops down. They’re miserable. But they don’t have to be. Guess what? You can switch hands. It’s okay. People will think you just want to wave to the crowd on the other side of the road.

  As long as you’ve prepared and do your best, there’s no shame in being flexible.

  Forgiveness Is the Healing Factor

  _______

  Louie truly became a different person, able to forget the bitterness and sincerely forgive.

  —CYNTHIA APPLEWHITE ZAMPERINI, 1999

  Over the many years since World War II I’ve thought about what happened to me in Japan, and about the Bird specifically. Just to check myself now and then I’d think of the Bird getting off scot-free and wait to see how I felt. Nothing. It didn’t bother me a bit.

  A man at Universal Pictures once said to me, “You’ve forgiven the Japanese, but don’t you condemn them for what they did?” I thought about it: True forgiveness goes hand in hand with no longer condemning. Some people forgive and then keep thinking, “That son of a gun, what he did to me.” But is that forgiveness? When you forgive you have to let it go.

  IN LATE 1997, when CBS producer Draggan Mihailovich was putting together The Great Zamperini, a thirty-five-minute feature on me for the 1998 Winter Olympics at Nagano, he called one day and said, “Get a hold of your chair.”

  “Okay, I got a hold of my chair,” I said. “What’s up?”

  “I found the Bird. He’s alive.”

  “What!” When I’d gone back to Japan in 1950, I visited Sugamo prison, where the men who had imprisoned me were then incarcerated. I wanted to see them face-to-face, to look into their eyes and offer forgiveness. I had hoped to see the Bird there, but he’d disappeared and everyone thought he’d committed suicide. What really happened is that Mutsuhiro Watanabe had hidden in a mountain cabin in the hills of Nagano for years, returning only after the general amnesty.

  “Yeah, we found him. We’re going to have to corner him and get an interview. Would you like to see him?” Draggan asked.

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  Draggan had tracked down the Bird, called his home, and spoken to his wife. He asked if an interview was possible. She said he was sick. A couple of days later, Draggan called again. This time Watanabe’s wife said, “He’s on a trip.”

  Draggan and his crew, including veteran CBS reporter Bob Simon, who reported the story, decided to hide and watch the house. They discovered that Watanabe took long walks, so they set up a camera across the street, and hid a small camera in a crew member’s hat. When the Bird came out, they approached him and speaking through a translator asked if he was Watanabe.

  “Yes, I’m Mutsuhiro Watanabe,” he said. After the usual formalities he agreed to speak.

  When asked if he knew Louis Zamperini, the Bird said, “Ah, Zamperini-ka. Orympi-ka. Number-one prisoner. I remember him well. Good prisoner.”

  “Would you like to see him?”

  To my surprise, the Bird had said, “Yes.”

  In the middle of the interview, Watanabe’s son and grandson came out of the house and discovered what was going on. As they listened they heard Bob Simon say, “Well, if [Zamperini] was such a good prisoner, why did you beat the hell out of him?”

  Watanabe spoke very little English, but he understood. “He said that?”

  “Zamperini and the other prisoners remember you in particular as being the most brutal of all the guards,” Simon asked. “How do you explain that?”

  “Beating and kicking in Caucasian society are considered cruel behavior,” the Bird explained. But there were some occasions, he suggested, in which beating and kicking were unavoidable. “I wasn’t given military orders,” the Bird explained, “but because of my own personal feelings … I treated the prisoners strictly as enemies of Japan. Zamperini was well-known to me. If he says he was beaten by Watanabe, then such a thing probably occurred at the camp.”

  Watanabe’s family was shocked. They didn’t know his history. They were upset by the old man trying to find the correct words. They stopped the interview, and told the crew to leave and not come back.

  I can’t blame them for that. Any son, no matter whether his father is right or wrong, is going to back his father.

  Draggan stopped filming, but asked Watanabe if he still wanted to meet with me. Again, he said yes.

  Draggan tried to arrange a get-together but the son adamantly refused. “Mr. Zamperini will expect my father to bow and scrape and ask forgiveness.”

  When Draggan told me that I said, “No. I’m not going to ask him to ask for forgiveness. I’ve already forgiven him.”

  Efforts to get us together continued. I wrote a letter to the Bird and carried it to Japan. In it, I told him about my conversion and how it had led to forgiveness. But the Bird still did not want to meet, and that was that. I gave the letter to someone who
said he could get it to Watanabe. I don’t know if it ever arrived.

  In 2003 Watanabe died.

  Of course, I’ve thought often about what I might have said or done had we been able to meet. I imagined introducing myself, chatting, suggesting lunch. I’d ask about his family. If the war came up I’d say it was unfortunate that we’d even had a war. Otherwise, I wouldn’t speak of it, or accuse him of crimes. The one who forgives never brings up the past to that person’s face. When you forgive, it’s like it never happened.

  True forgiveness is complete and total. Of all the wonderful results of changing my life, perhaps the best is my ability to forgive.

  BEFORE RETURNING TO Japan for the Winter Olympics, I asked Draggan Mihailovich if he could work it out so that I could run with the torch alongside my prison camp.

  Draggan said that CBS had to go to the Japanese Olympic Committee, Coca-Cola, and our Olympic Committee to get permission for me just to carry the torch. He also got together with the people who had established the Peace Park in Joetsu, and went to the mayor. Originally, the Japanese only wanted Japanese in the relay on their home soil. But they agreed, and I was the only outsider.

  The whole idea of a dedicated Peace Park is phenomenal. Of all the former POW camp sites, only Joetsu did this. When they realized the truth of what had happened in their city, they didn’t want anyone to forget: not themselves, their kids, or their kids’ kids. They pitched in, pooled their resources, bought the land, and created the Peace Park. “It’s beautiful that you’ve forgiven all that happened here,” the mayor told me, “but we should never forget.”

  Carrying the torch through the town where I was a prisoner of war was both thrilling and touching. Our minds have movies that play and replay, and I couldn’t stop picturing the camp. We were slave labor. I was beaten almost on a daily basis. I had hated the people. I thought about all my buddies dying. I had fantasized about getting revenge.

  And then there I was running with thousands of cheering people lining the road, many of them school kids. They received me with love and graciousness. I felt like a king.

  To tell you the truth, although I’d made my peace years before with all that had happened, I was once again a bit surprised that no bitterness remained in my heart. Forgiveness had been the healing factor. The power of acceptance, of being cheerful, at peace, and content explains the smile on the face of an old man carrying the torch in a place where a young man had suffered the most.

  Remember Me This Way

  Louie in his early eighties. “I think my skateboarding shakes up a few people. Some stop their cars to be sure their eyes aren’t deceiving them.”

  A Charitable Heart

  _______

  If I had a time machine, all my memories, and could go back and live my life over, there’s not too much I would change. Sure, maybe I wouldn’t want to get on the Green Hornet and crash into the ocean, and drift, and be a POW, and have PTSD, and all the rest—but there’s no use in speculating. It took that experience to get to where I am now: telling my story, doing charitable work, saving lives, giving counsel, and helping kids.

  It’s been a great life, especially working with the kids.

  And now look at what’s happened: I have two great books about me, the most beautiful woman in the world directing a movie about my life—and hugging me. I have a wonderful family, strong faith, and so many friends. Who can complain? I accept everything.

  As I’ve always said: All things work together for good.

  I’m ninety-seven years old and, like everyone else, a little afraid of death because no matter how old you are you’re always making plans and you don’t want to be interrupted. I feel as if I’ve already lived two hundred years, but I wouldn’t mind two hundred more just so I can keep doing what I’ve been doing: helping the underdog. That’s been my program. That’s been my whole life.

  I’m a thankful citizen of America who just wants to be remembered for his charitable heart.

  Afterword

  _______

  On July 13, 2014, eleven days after Louis Zamperini passed away at 97, the family held a private memorial to celebrate his life. Among the speakers: Louie’s daughter, Cynthia; son, Luke; grandson, Clay; 60 Minutes producer and long-time friend Draggan Mihailovich; Angelina Jolie; and Kyle Gauthier, whose reflections appeared earlier in the book. Each shared emotional memories of the man who had so enriched their lives.

  LUKE ZAMPERINI

  Louis was prepared. When his plane crashed in the Pacific Ocean in 1943 he was prepared for the ordeal. As a Boy Scout, he learned that bullets lose velocity in about three to four feet of water. Studying physiology in college he learned that the mind was like a muscle. It would atrophy if not exercised. And taking a course offered to all troops in the Hawaiian Islands—but only fifteen servicemen attended, he said—he learned how to deal with sharks in the water. Leaning to drive from my father was not so much about operating the vehicle as it was a course in advance contingency planning.

  Louis was funny. When my mother came home after traveling around the world by tramp steamer in the 1960s, she told us about walking up to the pyramids when a local man slapped her on the bottom. Dad asked, “What did you do?” She said, “I picked up a rock and threw it at him.” Dad said, “You should have done the Christian thing and turned the other cheek.”

  In 1998, when asked by the mayor of Joetsu, Japan, if there was anything good about being in a Japanese prison camp, he answered quickly: “Yes. It prepared me for fifty-five years of married life.”

  Louis was loving. Like most of his generation, my dad expressed his love in acts of service. Later on in life he began to start saying, “I love you.” But early on he showed his love by knowing that you had a need and then just doing something about it.

  For instance, he didn’t care much for the pet rats I had as a child, but one day after my carelessness seemingly caused their untimely end, my dad determined that they were still alive, and he stayed up all night feeding them sugar water from an eyedropper and nursing them back to health. In the morning I was surprised and excited beyond belief.

  When I was older, he noticed that a tree was leaning dangerously on the roof of my house. He single-handedly removed it while I was at work.

  Louis was miraculous. He didn’t perform miracles to demonstrate his power before men, but miracles happened to him to demonstrate the power of God in his life. A few that come to mind was the miraculous escape from the crashed bomber after having been pinned under the waist gunner’s tripod, wrapped in coiled cabling, and passing out as the plane sank, then coming to and floating free without any explanation. When a Japanese fighter strafed his raft with forty-eight bullet holes, none of the three occupants crammed into that tiny space was injured. In prison camp he held a heavy wooden plank over his head for thirty-seven minutes.

  But the greatest miracle was finding reconciliation with his creator and then forgiving all those who had tormented him—including the Bird. Two years of recurring nightmares in which he throttled the Bird, over in an instant—and never to resume for the rest of his life.

  Louis was my Dad, my hero, and my role model. I miss him greatly.

  DRAGGAN MIHAILOVICH

  One day in 1999, Louie wanted to take me to his hometown of Torrance, a few exits south of LA, so that he could show me Zamperini Field, the airfield that had been named in his honor. The piece I’d done on Louie for the Winter Olympics had aired the year before, but we were friends now, and I made it a point to see him whenever I was in Los Angeles.

  Louie was driving his Subaru wagon and I was a little nervous sitting in the passenger seat with an eighty-two-year-old at the wheel. But I figured if he could fly a plane, he could drive a car. The first thing I noticed is that Louie liked to sit really low and far back, his long legs stretched out.

  We were negotiating the boulevards of Hollywood and Westwood, heading for the freeway, when suddenly an Audi came to an abrupt stop in front of us in the left lane. In an inst
ant, my eyes widened, my heart skipped a beat, and I wondered if Louie was seeing what I was seeing. If not, we were about to have the four interlocked Audi logo circles permanently branded on our faces. Before I could gasp or find my voice, Louie swooshed the steering wheel sharply to the right, and then just as quickly swung the steering wheel to the left. He had evaded the Audi by darting cleanly into the center lane—and then back to our original path.

  Holy smokes, I thought. That was impressive. Two seconds passed. Three. Another. Finally, Louie turned to me and quite matter-of-factly said, “I’ve still got it, don’t I?”

  Did he ever.

  And he never lost it.

  CLAY ZAMPERINI

  The loss of my grandfather has been difficult to process. It’s not that I can’t imagine a world without him in it, but rather that his passing is a loss that is not unique to my family, but affects an unfathomable number of people.

  Louis Zamperini has been a lot of things to a lot of people: An example of elite athleticism and a reminder that with hard work and direction, we are all capable of anything. A testament to the strength and resilience of the human spirit when, despite his hopeless situation, he and Russell Philips survived a forty-seven-day-long journey lost at sea. Perhaps most important, he has been an example of our own ability to free ourselves from our demons when he forgave his prison guards for torturing him for two-and-a-half years.

  But to me, he has always just been my grandfather. The loving, kind, and generous man who went above and beyond to give me a chance at a better life than he had, and the wisdom to be a better man than he was. That’s a tough act to follow. Louis taught me what it is to be strong, what it is to be compassionate. He taught me that by holding on to anger and bitterness, I would only hurt myself. He often told me that the most important thing I should remember was to “have a cheerful countenance at all times.” No matter how grim your situation is, whether you’re lost at sea, or just having a bad day, keeping a positive, cheerful attitude is the key to your own survival.